Abstract
What precisely does a distraction threaten? An agent who spends an inordinate amount of time attending to her smartphone—what precisely is she lacking? I argue that whereas agency of attention is the agent’s non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to, autonomy of attention is the agent, through her second-order desires, effectively interfering with her non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to. Freedom of attention is the agent’s possibility to hold or switch her focus of attention without fixating on any specific focus against her will or without distraction from chosen foci. This conceptual work provides resources to track manipulations that diminish a person’s freedom of attention.
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Notes
- 1.
Even though I concentrate on digital media-induced manipulation of attention, the conceptual distinctions are applicable to distractions of all kinds—such as noise from a renovation outside—as well as to states of immersion that can be caused, for instance, by an intense non-digital game.
- 2.
This may be a paradigm case of phubbing, an incidence of the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone (Aagaard et al., 2021).
- 3.
Literature criticizing attention economy (e.g., Williams, 2018) has deemed that attention is treated as a commodity when the business model of a digital company is based on trackable user engagement.
- 4.
Regulation to protect rights is one of the central grounds for regulation. According to Prosser, others central grounds are regulation for market choice, regulation for social solidarity, and regulation as deliberation (2010, p. 18).
- 5.
Following Susser et al. (2019, pp. 2–3), I use the term online manipulation to talk about such manipulative practices that are enabled by a broad range of information technologies.
- 6.
Whereas Allport (among others) has argued that attention should not be treated as a single mechanism (2011), Mole argues that it is what unifies consciousness to perform a task (2011), Watzl that it is a priority structure (2017), and Wu that it is the mechanism that selects actions (2014). It does not matter which view the reader endorses but the extent of the loss of agency and autonomy of attention has slightly different meaning on each view: in Watzl’s view, the detrimental effects of losing one’s priorities to something external to the agent herself is emphasized, whereas it follows from Wu’s view that the agent’s actions are governed by something other than the agent herself when she has lost her autonomy of attention.
- 7.
Bhargava and Velasquez call rewards that vary in frequency and magnitude ‘intermittent variable rewards’ and present an extensive review of the ways in which digital platforms can create and reinforce reward-seeking behavior (2021, pp. 326–327). They point out that our understanding of the ways in which digital companies regulate rewards are not yet fully known and that there are probably mechanisms that are not well documented in the current literature.
- 8.
Intentionally directing one’s attention is a prime example of a mental action (e.g., Levy, 2016, p. 68).
- 9.
Socialized notions of autonomy are not incompatible with what is argued here about autonomy of attention. Perhaps the agent never chooses her own values without the influence of the community around her. This is precisely what makes deep oppression cases, discussed in more detail in part 4, difficult because they do not display a deficit in autonomous choice. In deep oppression regarding autonomy of attention, for instance, following her friend’s example, the agent may have redefined her values so that they allow her to spend excessive amounts of her time attending to the smartphone. Something is wrong in cases of this kind, however, and it is partly due to the community in question to determine what that something is. In deep oppression regarding autonomy of attention, moral intuitions and reactive attitudes of other people provide feedback as to something being wrong. In any case, here it is assumed that autonomy of attention is a relative notion—autonomy is always a matter of degree not only because of the laboriousness of autonomous processes, but also because deep oppression is insidious.
- 10.
I assume that freedom of attention can be limited without any person being responsible for diminishing the agent’s possibilities for attention guidance—as it is limited in the case of disruptive thoughts, for instance.
- 11.
Whereas autonomy of attention seems to have degrees, so does freedom of attention. Freedom of alive agents should not be approached as a binary construct—cases of addiction show this especially well because if an action is very difficult for the agent, it is very near being impossible thus limiting her freedom to do something (Côté, 2020). In this way of approaching freedom, it can be seen how reward-seeking behavior may be freedom-limiting, without necessarily making acting otherwise impossible.
- 12.
Here I assume that attention norms are collective agreements that regulate how and to what people should pay attention to and what should be ignored.
- 13.
According to Latham, “S is mindful of the mental state at the focus of her consciousness at t iff she has the higher-order thought at t that she is experiencing this lower-order mental state now” (2016, p. 1792). In many definitions of mindfulness, a non-judgmental evaluative stance is also necessary, which Latham does point out (2016, p. 1794). The non-judgmental nature is central to many mindfulness practices, and it probably has a role in the beneficial effects of mindfulness meditation. Here the notion of mindfulness, however, is a more limited one, merely pointing out the relevance of attentionally agentive phenomena in noticing mental states.
- 14.
Latham, among others, has argued that the control of mental states is based on our ability to be mindful.
- 15.
Attention capital need not only concern individual agents. It can be inherited from a workplace, a school, or a family. It can be developed independently; agents can have attention capital as well as communities.
- 16.
There is some controversy on the definition of manipulation, especially when using it in online contexts. In these contexts, it has been debated whether an algorithm, or an artificial intelligence, instead of a person, may be manipulative. There is also disagreement on whether intent is necessary for manipulation and on whether the intent needs to be malevolent to account as manipulation. Susser et al. (2019, p. 3) think that manipulation exploits the victim’s vulnerabilities in steering her behavior toward the ends of the manipulator. Buss thinks that manipulation interferes with self-governing activity—making up one’s own mind about how to act (2005).
- 17.
Following Susser et al. (2019), manipulation is a hidden form of influence, covert subversion of another person’s decision-making.
- 18.
This framework can be used to provide an answer as to when and how precisely attention manipulation evades an agent’s decisions or whether an influence on a person’s attention merely coerces her to pay attention to something. A fine-grained analysis of attention manipulation provides a nuanced picture for finding out whether, and when, specific manipulations of attention are wrong. For instance, it makes it possible to address specific normative questions such as, when precisely an immersion of attention is harmful, or whether mindfulness skills should be taught to everyone.
- 19.
If we accept that some degree of mindfulness is necessary for agentive choices regarding one’s mental states, reducing mindfulness could happen through intoxicating an agent, or depriving him of education to learn how to be mindful.
- 20.
Ubiquitous computing could bring attention manipulation to a level that cannot be escaped. This can happen through the Internet of Things, for instance. In Weber and Weber (2010), the Internet of Things is “the backbone of ubiquitous computing”, that enables smart environments to recognize and identify objects and retrieve information from the Internet to their adaptive use.
- 21.
Following Bennett Moses (2017), I assume that new technologies can generate new risks and harms which create a need for regulation to protect the rights of the parties that have been harmed. They can also create concern over social solidarity, which creates the need for regulation to ensure adequate inclusion (Bennett Moses, 2017, p. 578). The notion of attention capital suggests that there are questions of equality related to how resilient a person, or a group of people, is to resist their attention being manipulated. According to Bennett Moses, new technologies also create pressures for proper democratic deliberation over their design (2017, p. 583). So that this kind of democratic deliberation would be possible, a full account of the threats in question is needed. Thus, a more detailed analysis of the variety of ways to influence a person’s attention is useful so that it could be collectively decided whether it should be allowed, and when.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Michael Laakasuo, Tuukka Kaidesoja, Tarna Kannisto, Tuomo Käkelä, Jyri Vartiainen, and Sebastian Watzl for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. I must also thank audiences at Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, at Practical Philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, at SPP 2021, at ESPP 2021, at the Oslo Mind Group, at Tennessee Value and Agency Online Conference 2021, at the 72nd Annual Northwest Philosophy Conference, at Georgia Online Workshop on Philosophical Perspectives on Rights, Obligations, and Freedom, at the Future of Feminist Philosophy Workshop at the University of Tilburg, and at PT-AI 2021 in Gothenburg. Research for this chapter has been funded by Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation, Emil Aaltonen Foundation, and Kone Foundation.
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Kärki, K. (2022). Autonomy of Attention. In: Müller, V.C. (eds) Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021. PTAI 2021. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09153-7_4
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